Problems getting old games to run

[Baron von Blitztank]

So in all this Escapist talk about Mass Effect 3, Bioware hate and death threats I decided to nip to Amazon and buy both Deus Ex' games and the Thief series for the PC.
Unfortunately Deus Ex 1 is being quite a ***** to install. It always seems to give up at the tail-end of the installation (despite it shows the progress bar being completely filled) and on the few occasions it does get further than that I'm greeted by a long and incomprehensible error message. If I try to play it regardless it repeatedly asks me to insert the disc into the CD-Drive (despite the fact that the disc is already in) and won't let me proceed. Best of all is that I have to delete the Deus Ex directory from my hard-drive every time it fucks up but my computer won't let me and says that I need permission to do so despite the fact that I'm listed as an administrator on my PC and I'm the only user.
*sigh* I'm so tempted to give up right now but I'm determined to find some way for this to work!

Ok...That's my rant over.

To keep things going , has anyone else here got any stories about trying to get old games running on a PC? Did you give up or did you persevere and manage to find some way to succeed?

*EDIT* Managed to get it to work... Somehow.

 

[number2301]

Not massively interesting, but I got Deus Ex running on Linux, so you must be able to get it going on Windows!

You could always try torrenting it seeing as you've paid for it. Perhaps an alternative file will work?

 

[Riki Darnell]

My friend had issues playing Hitman on his new comp, I don't quite remember the issue but it has something to do with the sound card I think. He just kind of shrugged it off.

 

[DoPo]

Not massively interesting, but I got Deus Ex running on Linux, so you must be able to get it going on Windows!

Out of curiosity - how? Was it Wine or is there a Linux port or something?

OT: yes, lots of times. Last game I've had a lot of trouble with was KOTOR 2 on Vista. For some reason, I could install it and play it but I wouldn't be able to launch it a second time, unless I reinstalled it. No clue to why that was. I finally gave up and decided to try it later. There might be a community patch (or a official one, I suppose) that fixes that or it could have been Vista itself that caused problems.

Also, Blood Omen. It had a fair bit of workaround to work on more modern PCs. Thankfully, I played it on a computer that was just capable of running the game without more modification. And by "just capable" I mean, that if it was slightly better, I would have had to force a limit on the processor.

 

[putowtin]

OT: yes, lots of times. Last game I've had a lot of trouble with was KOTOR 2 on Vista.

Snap, and unfortunately I don't know of any way of fixing it (damn and blast!)

 

[DioWallachia]

Uff you are telling me? Try to install Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 on Windows XP

 

[Bostur]

Weird issue with Deus Ex. My copy runs fine just installing it normally on Windows 7 64 bit. Sounds a bit like it's the CD that has a scratch or something. Try cleaning it.
It could also be an issue with permissions, for testing you could try installing and running it with an Administrator account see if it makes any difference.

I can usually get most old games to run, but old games that require some variety of Windows can sometimes be a pain. In some cases setting the compatibility to Win98 helps, in other cases there are sometimes fan made patches for running the games.

DOS games are easy to run in DOSBox. Hell they are even easier to run than with old fashioned DOS, due to the standardized sound support in DOSBox. It used to be a pain fiddling with IRQs and DMAs and whatnot.


If old games crash or has graphical artifacts, my first course of action usually is to turn off any kind of acceleration or fancy 3D effects. Modern PCs can often run them fine anyway.

 

[Lucem712]

Not massively interesting, but I got Deus Ex running on Linux, so you must be able to get it going on Windows!

You could always try torrenting it seeing as you've paid for it. Perhaps an alternative file will work?

On a similar note, I got Fallout uno to run without any trouble shooting, just popped it in and opened it under WINE.

Maybe OP can use a DOSBox if isn't compatible?

[Captcha "Broken Record" - What are you saying, Escapist?? HM??]

 

[DoPo]

Uff you are telling me? Try to install Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 on Windows XP

I did. And I played it. I also played BO on XP. I am slowly getting convinced that my PC was at least semi magical because I didn't have much problem with any of those. Well, maybe BO but it wasn't that hard, as far as I remember - I just had to install a community patch and edit a config file or two.

At any rate, nothing else needed more effort than "install and run". At the same time, a friend of mine had incredible amount of trouble with the same games on his machine. He couldn't get anything below SR2 to run. And even SR2 was weird. Well, it ran but it looked seriously screwed up - it had lots of purple. I think all the shades of blue were replaced by shades of purple. And SR2 has lots of blue. Also, some other colours, like green, I believe, were swapped for purple. It wasn't the drivers (we changed several versions) it wasn't the Windows (XP, like mine, same basic setup because I installed it for him. Also we tried it after reinstalling the OS. At least twice.) it wasn't the video card (he bought another one and it was still the same). The other most likely culprits would be the hard drive and the monitor - if they somehow hated this particular game. However, he finally bought a new machine a year and a half back - SR2 still looked like all purple-y. The only thing that is similar between his old and his new systems is the power socket they use and their location. And the speakers, come to think of it.

 

[DioWallachia]

Uff you are telling me? Try to install Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 on Windows XP

I did. And I played it. I also played BO on XP. I am slowly getting convinced that my PC was at least semi magical because I didn't have much problem with any of those. Well, maybe BO but it wasn't that hard, as far as I remember - I just had to install a community patch and edit a config file or two.

At any rate, nothing else needed more effort than "install and run". At the same time, a friend of mine had incredible amount of trouble with the same games on his machine. He couldn't get anything below SR2 to run. And even SR2 was weird. Well, it ran but it looked seriously screwed up - it had lots of purple. I think all the shades of blue were replaced by shades of purple. And SR2 has lots of blue. Also, some other colours, like green, I believe, were swapped for purple. It wasn't the drivers (we changed several versions) it wasn't the Windows (XP, like mine, same basic setup because I installed it for him. Also we tried it after reinstalling the OS. At least twice.) it wasn't the video card (he bought another one and it was still the same). The other most likely culprits would be the hard drive and the monitor - if they somehow hated this particular game. However, he finally bought a new machine a year and a half back - SR2 still looked like all purple-y. The only thing that is similar between his old and his new systems is the power socket they use and their location. And the speakers, come to think of it.

Ironicly All the games BUT SR1 work just fine for me, Specially BO without even using DosBox. However i cant get SR2 to use that effect during cutscenes that is like blurry after effect that its supposed to play during a slow motion monologue like in this cutscene:


You will notice the moment i am talking about.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

*sigh* I'm so tempted to give up right now but I'm determined to find some way for this to work!

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/deus_ex

also

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/thief_gold
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/thief_2_the_metal_age

 

[evilneko]

Seconding the Virtual Machine idea. I'm a fan of VirtualBox though.

I had a lot of trouble getting sound to work in SimCity 2000 (best SimCity IMO) in DOSBox...

 

[Battleaxx90]

Has anyone else here got any stories about trying to get old games running on a PC? Did you give up or did you persevere and manage to find some way to succeed?

It's not exactly a PC, but this old copy of Final Fantasy X that I bought pre-owned takes a long time to load large areas. I actually had to stop playing altogether when this one area flat-out refused to load! So far, I haven't managed to get it to work yet, but whatever. At least I have the eventual PS3 remake to look forward to.

 

[octafish]

So in all this Escapist talk about Mass Effect 3, Bioware hate and death threats I decided to nip to Amazon and buy both Deus Ex' games and the Thief series for the PC.
Unfortunately Deus Ex 1 is being quite a ***** to install. It always seems to give up at the tail-end of the installation (despite it shows the progress bar being completely filled) and on the few occasions it does get further than that I'm greeted by a long and incomprehensible error message. If I try to play it regardless it repeatedly asks me to insert the disc into the CD-Drive (despite the fact that the disc is already in) and won't let me proceed. Best of all is that I have to delete the Deus Ex directory from my hard-drive every time it fucks up but my computer won't let me and says that I need permission to do so despite the fact that I'm listed as an administrator on my PC and I'm the only user.
*sigh* I'm so tempted to give up right now but I'm determined to find some way for this to work!

Ok...That's my rant over.

To keep things going , has anyone else here got any stories about trying to get old games running on a PC? Did you give up or did you persevere and manage to find some way to succeed?

Disk? What is this Disk you speak of? Surely you mean you bought these games from GOG who have tweaked them to run well on modern OSes for you? Yea even Vista and Windows 7. My physical copy of Deus Ex GOTY works fine on XP but I haven't tried it in 7. I never will either because i re-purchased from GOG and the GOG version is works on all my OSes DRM and Disk Check free.

I haven't been able to get SS2 running in Windows 7, but I can get it running in XP just fine.

 

[DoPo]

Disk? What is this Disk you speak of? Surely you mean you bought these games from GOG who have tweaked them to run well on modern OSes for you? Yea even Vista and Windows 7.

Yes, I wandered the same, but I checked Amazon and it turns out that DE there boasts that it's compatible with Vista. Well, at least one of them, there is a cheaper copy that works for Windows 98/ME max.

I just assumed OP likes his games physical. I myself have DE on Steam only because I bought it there before GOG released it. And I guarantee it works on Windows 7 without any hassle at all.

 

[GundamSentinel]

Ah, tried for days to get Starlancer running on my laptop. Keeps crashing to desktop. Damn them for never getting a patch out. Even when the game was new there were troubles getting it to run.

 

[number2301]

Not massively interesting, but I got Deus Ex running on Linux, so you must be able to get it going on Windows!

Out of curiosity - how? Was it Wine or is there a Linux port or something?

Just Wine, it manages to run quite a lot of games quite easily, including Civ 4. Although I gave up in the end and bought Win 7 since I realised I was putting extra effort in and getting inferior performance.

Also note that was a single core machine!

 

[Antari]

Ya Star Trek Birth of the Federation. It was made for Windows 95, it barely worked with that OS let alone trying to get it to work with anything else. I eventually gave up.

 

[DoPo]

Not massively interesting, but I got Deus Ex running on Linux, so you must be able to get it going on Windows!

Out of curiosity - how? Was it Wine or is there a Linux port or something?

Just Wine, it manages to run quite a lot of games quite easily, including Civ 4. Although I gave up in the end and bought Win 7 since I realised I was putting extra effort in and getting inferior performance.

Also note that was a single core machine!

Ah, I see. I haven't bothered running games in Wine but that's partly because I was a bit lazy and I already have Windows 7 for free, so I decided "Why bother if I can just dual-boot?" so that's what I've been doing.

When I get the time, I'll make a VM with Windows XP (also for free - yay!) on the Linux and have some games installed there, so I don't have to restart any time I want to play Heroes 3 or something.

CAPTCHA: "Tastes like chicken" let's see if that describes Kellogg's good enough.

 

[felbot]

tried to get my copy of sin to work but when i start it up it just tells me it over buffed and shuts off.
sin emergence worked at least.